Grooming jihad, i.e. entrapment of mostly minor non-Muslim girls for sexual exploitation and/or conversion to Islam and marriage, is a serious crime across Bharat and even in countries like UK. It occurs due to indoctrination of Muslim youth by fundamentalist and supremacist clerics and community leaders who view it as a means towards the end of Islamic dominance. Colloquially, in Bharat, it is also known as ‘Love Jihad’ as often the perpetrator assumes a false Hindu identity and feigns to love the victim before unveiling his true intentions at a later stage.

However, the urban middle class and left-liberal chatterati dismiss this issue, due to their own brainwashing against so-called ‘Hindutva extremism’. Soaked in self-loathing towards their Hindu identity since childhood, this class believes Grooming/Love Jihad is a ‘Hindutva conspiracy theory’ to target innocent Muslims and prevent the creation of a utopian irreligious and classless society.

Along with OTT web series, TV serials are also increasingly reflecting the normalisation of such self-harming narratives that are totally out of sync with reality. A twitter thread by @SayanG1288, reproduced below, throws light on one such Bengali TV serial ‘Khorkuto’ which premiered in August 2020 and airs on Star India‘s Bengali channel Star Jalsha, and is also available on digital platform Hotstar:Blinded by their rank ignorance of Islamic doctrines and history, this educated-yet-unaware ‘woke’ crowd is further lulled into a false sense of security by superficial pop culture that reinforces their feel-good, uninformed assumptions. The Hinduphobic intelligentsia plays their part by ignoring rampant grooming jihad crimes, while treating the odd successful inter-faith relationship as the norm and shaming Hindu society for being ‘intransigent’.

Popular Bengali soap ‘Khorkuto’ which garners top TRP is now flowing with a narrative driven with Love Jihad and legitimizing dhimmitude and Islamic values on Bengali Hindu ethos. Earlier this used to be just another daily serial revolving around joint family relationships.

Since past week, a new narrative was set when a Muslim character ‘Adil’ emerged .This was followed by the revelation that the household head “Jethu” had a daughter (Munia) who fled with a Muslim and married him due to which Jethu disowned her. This is a usual Love Jihad case and Adil is Munia’s son.

Adil introduced as a staunch Muslim keeping roza, wearing Islamic tabiz – again a case where the Hindu woman was forced to raise her child as a rigid Muslim keeping off dharmic values. Most importantly, the family members were portrayed as dhimmis being ultra accommodative. They were fine when Adil refused food offering from them due to his roza.

Now in the latest episode, Adil in turn went out for a outing with choti-bahu without informing others. It is a direct metaphor of targeting Hindu woman, this time a married one.

Lastly, the narrative is just brewing and it is expected the forlorn daughter of Jethu, ‘Munia’ would reappear and potentially lecture, influence and brainwash her parents on love, humanity and in turn, legitimize Love Jihad or better, ‘Family Jihad’ in this context.

Tactically speaking, it is a very old and tested Islamization strategy of targeting non-believer women and forwarding their demography via Love Jihad. Even more frightening is the fact that our mothers/sisters and even males are also regular viewers of this daily soap “Khorkuto”.

The most populist way to demonise a social reform in our country is to communalise it. The Citizenship Amendment Act, which provides Indian citizenship to religiously persecuted Hindus, Sikhs, Christians and Buddhists in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh, was virulently opposed by Indian Muslims, labelling it as anti-Muslim, though the Act neither affected their nationality nor their constitutional rights.

Similarly, when the Muslim Women (Protection of Rights on Marriage) Act was passed criminalising triple talaq, the clerics were up in arms accusing the government of promoting Hindutva by interfering in their personal law and religious beliefs. Now, when Assam tries to modernise madrasa education, it is dubbed as an attempt to deprive Muslim students of Koranic teachings.

The latest reform to draw their fury is the move by eight BJP-ruled states to ban unlawful religious conversion, which Islamic law itself prohibits. The term ‘love jihad’, loosely referred to forced conversion, is the gift of UP Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath to the communal lexicon. Adults falling in love to marry across any faith is acceptable to him but not marriages that are conspired with the intent to convert gullible girls to different faiths.

Like him, other BJP chief ministers are aware that right to choose partners irrespective of caste, creed or religion is inherited under right to life and personal liberty enshrined in Articles 25-28 of the Constitution.

Accordingly, they have designed the Prohibition of Unlawful Religious Conversion ordinance/bills only to ensure that ‘love’ does not become an instrument for ‘jihad’ (proselytisation/religious conversion), a threat to law and order by creating social tension and a means to cause demographic imbalance.

Conversion of Hindus to other faiths is a historical reality and will continue, given the nature of our society and the Constitution.

However, before these bills become a rallying cry to organise Shaheen Baghs across the country, it is important to understand what they stand for.

First, they are neither against any particular religion nor opposed to inter-faith marriages that are voluntary and agreed upon in good faith. Second, they accept conversions and love marriages, but with no strings attached.

They only insist that if someone wants to marry a person of different faith, he/she must apply for District Magistrate’s permission and wait until it is verified that he did not give false identity to lure the girl in love and then coerce her to convert and marry.

These bills may be politically correct but unlikely to stem conversion of mostly Hindu ST/SC girls. What is actually required is to educate and financially empower the likely victims so that they make an informed choice in matters of love and conversion.